¹ In my view “what defines a gerrymander is the fact that some group or groups (e.g., a given political party or a given racial/linguistic group) is discriminated against compared to one or more other groups in that a greater number of votes Is needed for the former to achieve a given proportion of legislative seats than is true for the latter, and this bias is not one that can be attributed solely to the differing degree of geographic concentration among the groups” (Bernard Grofman and Howard Scarrow, “Current Issues in Reapportionment,” Law and Policy Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (October 1982), 435–474). This is another way of saying that gerrymandering exists when votes are not accorded the same weight.

I believe that districting is inherently political and that the notion of blindfolded districting paying no attention to political outcome but only looking at formal guidelines such as compactness or equal population is fundamentally misguided. I also believe that when legislatures are controlled by what Professor David Mayhew of Yale University ( Mayhew, David R., “Congressional Representation: Theory and Practice in Drawing the Districts,” in Polsby, Nelson (Ed.), Reapportionment in the 1970s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar) has so aptly called “partisan lust,” it is both appropriate and necessary for courts to assure effective representation to all citizens (see also Dixon, Robert G., Democratic Representation and Reapportionment in Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and “Fair Criteria and Procedures for Establishing Legislative Districts” In Policy Studies Journal, Special Issue on Reapportionment, Vol. 9, No. 6 (April 1981), 839–850, reprinted in Grofman, B., Lijphart, A., MacKay, R. and Scarrow, H. (Eds.), Representation and Redistricting Issues (1982), 7–19 Google Scholar; and Niemi, Richard G. and Deegan, John Jr., “Competition, Responsiveness and the Swing Ratio,” American Political Science Review (1978)Google Scholar; Baker, Gordon E., The Reapportionment Revolution (New York: Random House, 1966 Google Scholar; Grofman, Bernard, “For Single Member Districts Random Is Not Equal,” in Grofman, B., Lijphart, A., MacKay, R., and Scarrow, H. (Eds.), Representation and Redistricting Issues (1982), 55–58).Google Scholar

Like Justice White and Justice Stevens (in Karcher), my research on reapportionment equality is an inadequate method of judging the constitutionality of a reapportionment plan,” and that an “obvious gerrymander” should not be “wholly immune from attack simply because it comes closer to perfect population equality than every competing plan.”

² Niemi, Richard G. and Deegan, John Jr., “Competition, Responsiveness and the Swing Ratio,” American Political Science Review (1978), 1304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ This difference must be understood in context of the reduction of Republican seats from 21 in 1980 to 17 in 1982. As Cain (Bruce Cain, “Assessing the Partisan Effects of Redistricting,” Social Sciences Working Paper 491, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, September 1983: 5) trenchantly puts it, “The key then to the partisan gerrymander is that incumbents in the party controlling redistricting will be treated differently from those in the party that does not. The average level of electoral safety might actually increase more among incumbents in the non-controlling party than among those in the controlling party since greater safety is a by-product of higher electoral inefficiency.” Indeed, “If one were to consider the average gain or loss of incumbents by party, one might mistakenly conclude that the non-controlling party was better off. The point is that many of the individual incumbents in the noncontrolling party will be better off, but if the gerrymander is effective, the party as a whole will be worse off.” It is important to realize that in California a combination of “partisan reconstruction” (i.e., changes in the distribution of partisan registration across districts) and “the artful removal of inconveniently placed [Republican] incumbents” was used to alter the seat distribution and make the majority party more “efficiently distributed” than the minority party (Cain, 1983: 35).

⁴ Dellums (Dist.-8) may be vulnerable, but that is doubtful given his 56% success against a very well-financed Republican challenger in 1982. Moreover, the district is overwhelmingly Democratic in registration (a 34.8 percentage point Democratic registration edge in 1982) and has been made marginally more so in Plan II.

⁵ Although a geographically grotesque district but strongly Democratic seat was carved out for him three days before the filing deadline John Burton announced his decision to retire, and the seat was won by a “last minute” Democrat running an underfinanced campaign.

⁶ John Burton's former seat also had no incumbent put into it.

⁷ See, e.g., Erikson, Robert S., “The Advantage of Incumbency in Congressional Elections,” Polity, Vol. 3 (1971), 395–404 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayhew, David R., “Congressional Representation: Theory and Practice in Drawing the Districts,” in Polsby, N. (ed.), Reapportionment in the 1970s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Fiorina, Morris P., Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Ferejohn, John A., “On the Decline of Competition in Congressional Elections,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 71 (March 1977), 166–176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruce E. Cain, “Assessing the Partisan Effects of Redistricting,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 1–4, 1983; Social Science Working Paper 491, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, September 1978.

⁸ Bruce E. Cain, op. cit.

⁹ David R. Mayhew, op. cit.